Review: Beaux Arts Trio
April 5, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond
The Beaux Arts Trio is calling it quits after 53 years – Tanglewood recitals on Aug. 20 and 21 will be the group’s last; and if the trio’s performance at Virginia Commonwealth University was representative, this last season is very much a victory lap for Menahem Pressler.
The 84-year-old pianist, the sole remaining founding member of the ensemble, was visibly and audibly the guiding musical spirit of this concert. Violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses deferred to Pressler, not just on larger issues such as tempo and dynamics but on even the subtlest gestures. And most gestures were quite subtle.
According to James Oestreich's April 5 profile of the Beaux Arts in The New York Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/arts/music/05pres.html?ref=music – Hope's burgeoning solo career led him to quit the trio after six years; in doing so, he prompted Pressler and Meneses to shut down the group. In this concert, the violinist was an especially reticent presence in an uncommonly measured and muted reading of Beethoven’s "Archduke" Trio (in B flat major, Op. 97).
From the start, Pressler set a slow pace and established a tone of quiet, often profoundly quiet, interaction among complementary but quite distinct instrumental voices. The musicians’ intonation was spot-on, their playing highly refined but expressively understated. Only in the scherzo was there more than a hint of volatility.
The group’s performance of Schubert’s Piano Trio in E flat major (not the B flat Trio listed in the program) was somewhat more brisk and gave off some sparks, notably in the opening movement. Still, the prevailing tone was one of intimate, unhurried conversation, with Pressler’s crystalline piano the aural and musical focal point.
Hope and Meneses made finely spun work of the string harmonizations in the third movement, and the cellist’s treatment of the finale’s lyrical theme was straightforwardly eloquent.
Between the Beethoven and Schubert, the group played and repeated the brief "Work for Piano Trio" written for the Beaux Arts by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág. The music is very much in character for this late vintage of the Beaux Arts: piano-centric, with rarified string voicings, and a role for resonant silence that effectively constitutes a fourth instrument.
